PROTON got it first point in IRC

PROTON Motorsports team principal Chris Mellors says he was delighted with the Malaysian car make’s performance on Rally Islas Canarias El Corte Inglés after it scored its first Intercontinental Rally Challenge manufacturers’ championship points of the season courtesy of drivers Giandomenico Basso and PG Andersson.


Italian Basso, making his debut for the team, took ninth with Swede Andersson 16th after dropping time with a double puncture on stage five.

“It’s a good result for the team; maybe ninth doesn’t sound so impressive but when you look at the time difference on the rally, it was so close,” said Mellors. “With the improvements we have made, we’re less than a second per kilometre off the pace now. We did virtually no testing before because of the new suspension and everything else. Now we’ll do some proper testing with the chassis and engine. We can easily find another half second and then we’re getting close to fine-tuning. At the moment we’ve made a big step forward and we’re very pleased.”

Mellors continued: “The first time Giando was in the car [in the latest specification] was on Monday morning for the pre-event test, which is quite a testimony to where we are. This points to a good future. We’ve got a good programme this year and we can carry on the development. We start now.”

Full result here : Islas Canarias Result, IRC Result